It is often asked—­men have a right to ask—­what would the world have been by now without Christianity? without the Christian religion? without the Church?

But before these questions can be answered, we must define, it is discovered, what we mean by Christianity, the Christian religion, the Church.

And it is found—­or I at least believe it will be found—­more safe and wise to ask a deeper and yet a simpler question still:  What would the world have been without that influence on which Christianity, and religion, and the Church depend?  What would the world have been without the Holy Spirit of God?

But some will say:  This is a more abstruse question still.  How can you define, how can you analyse, the Spirit of God?  Nay, more, how can you prove its existence?—­Such questioners have been, as it were, baptized unto John’s baptism.  They are very glad to see people do right, and not do wrong, from any well-calculated motives, or wholesome and pleasant emotions.  But they have not as yet heard whether there be any Holy Spirit.

We can only answer, Just so.  This Holy Spirit in Whom we believe defies all analysis, all definition whatsoever.  His nature can be brought under no terms derived from human emotions or motives.  He is literally invisible; as invisible to the conception of the brain as He is to the bodily eye.  His presence is proved only by its effects.  The Spirit bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.

Such words must sound as dreams to those analytical philosophers who allow nothing in man below the sphere of consciousness, actual or possible; who have dissected the human mind till they find in it no personal will, no indestructible and spiritual self, but a character which is only the net result of innumerable states of consciousness; who hold that man’s outward actions, and also his inmost instincts, are all the result either of calculations about profit and loss, pleasure and pain, or of emotions, whether hereditary or acquired.  Ignoring the deep and ancient distinction, which no one ever brought out so clearly as St Paul, between the flesh and the spirit, they hold that man is flesh, and can be nothing more; that each person is not really a person, but is the consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical analysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a Spirit of God, to ennoble and enable the human spirit.  Why need there be, if the difference between an animal and a man be one of degree alone, and not of kind?